Tablet Shipments Anemic: Global shipments of tablets grew in Q3, but only by 2% on a quarterly basis, according to new figures from Strategy Analytics. On a year-over-year basis, tablet shipments declined 5%. The company also reported that Apple held the largest share of the tablet market at 23.1%, followed by Samsung at 12.5%.

Content Still King: New figures from Technavio estimate that $412.9 billion will be spent on content marketing worldwide by 2021, up from $195.6 billion in 2016. That's an annual compound growth rate of 16%. Technavio analysts report that traditional marketing techniques are losing their effectiveness, helping to drive the boost in content marketing.

Smartphone Life Cycle: According to Counterpoint Technology Market Research, smartphone users replace their devices every 21 months, on average. The firm found that users in emerging markets were replacing devices at a faster clip compared with residents in more mature ones. Smartphone users in Mexico were the fastest to upgrade, at an average of every 18 months.

Smart Speakers Storm US: By 2022, 55% of all homes in the US will have some type of smart speaker, according to Juniper Research. Devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home will be in 70 million households by that time. However, Juniper also predicts that most future interactions with voice assistants will take place on smartphones.

Trust Your Bank: Consumers in the UK have faith in their banks. A new report from SQS found that 85% of respondents trust banking providers as wards of their personal information and money. However, more than six in 10 added that they would be quick to look for a new bank if their current one suffered a data breach.

Tencent Nibbles at Snap: Perhaps overlooked in Snap Inc.'s disappointing Q3 earnings report was the fact that Tencent, parent company of China's dominant messaging service WeChat, had picked up a roughly 12% stake in the company. Tencent said it wants to help Snapchat build out its suite of services to include features like games and newsfeeds to better combat Facebook.